


Look At Me

by comehomelove



Category: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 07:29:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12552312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comehomelove/pseuds/comehomelove
Summary: After encountering Darth Vader for the first time in a tie fighter from aboard the Ghost, Ahsoka remembers her Master: the Force signature from that tie fighter. The cold, the dark. So much anger, so much fear.  It undid her, a little. She didn’t know what she had expected, but it wasn’t that. She didn’t expect it to be familiar.





	Look At Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starbirdrampant (ineasako22)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineasako22/gifts).



> Set during Rebels episode 2.18, "Shrouds of Darkness"

The cabin door shuts behind me and I fall back against it, exhausted. I’m still recovering from fainting in the Ghost earlier. I feel like I’m crumbling to pieces.

It’s not a feeling I usually get--on Coruscant I spent hours and hours practicing focus, staying present. _Not suppressed, your emotions,_ Master Yoda had said in his gentle way. _But not used for discernment. Side-by-side, they must be, with your rational, observant mind._

I had always been an excellent student. But the Force signature from that tie fighter. The cold, the dark. So much anger, so much fear. It undid me, a little. I didn’t know what I had expected, but it wasn’t that. I didn’t expect it to be familiar.

_Ahsoka. You know being affected isn’t a failure. Sometimes you’re gonna feel scared or angry. It’s okay. Don’t try to push it away or bottle up._

This happens to me sometimes, when I come up against something. Your voice, in the back of my head: calm, patient, a little bemused.

_Let it flow through you, let yourself feel it. Let it happen. Don’t draw from it, build it into something it’s not. The part of you that knows you’re scared or angry isn’t scared or angry. Observe your feelings. The part of your mind that’s observing is the part you use to figure out what to do next._

You were a great teacher, you know. You never doubted me. It kept me from doubting myself.

I am full of doubt, now.

_If the path forward isn’t clear, it just means you need to go inwards before you go anywhere else._

I take your phantom advice. I set down my bag and kneel by the bed and set up a holovid, projecting an image of you. It’s a recording you made for the library before I was your padawan, and hologram-you is young and confident. I play these recordings sometimes, both because they’re useful and because they’re comforting. I don’t dwell in the past, but I allow myself this small luxury. It’s a relic from a time that’s gone forever, before the Jedi were betrayed, before my friends, my family, were destroyed.

When I left you that last day at the temple, I could feel your heart breaking. It broke mine too. You didn’t fail me, Anakin. I never wanted you to feel that way. I never wanted you to feel like I-- But I left the Order. I walked away. I wasn’t there when they needed me. And now they’re gone. You’re gone. Dead. At least, I thought you were. I grieved for you. I still am. But better dead than--

I feel Ezra enter the room from my mediation and let myself float upwards. He has questions, needs guidance. I want to be that for him. He’s curious, searching. It makes my heart ache for the friends I made at the Temple. He’ll never have that.

_Keeping your saber moving is key to deflecting the fire of multiple adversaries._

_Fluid motion._

_One into the next, into the next._

_And so on. I’ve made some adjustments to the classic form 4 techniques that I think you’ll find work well against droids and other ranged attackers. Here. I’ll show you._

“He’s amazing,” Ezra says. “I’ve watched these recordings to help me with my own saber training.”

I can hear the awe in his voice. I recognize it. It’s the same awe I had for you, before Yoda sent me to Christophsis. Not that you didn’t awe me in person. But it was different. There was so much I didn’t know about you then.

“One, two, three.” I’ve seen the holo of Anakin so many times that I don’t need to look at it to see it perfectly: smooth, precise, frighteningly powerful motions. "Pivot, four."

I remember it so well: when he brought his saber down it was like the whole galaxy stood still in deference to him. I open my eyes.

“You should have seen him in person. Anakin Skywalker.” I keep my voice steady, almost light.

When was the last time I said your voice out loud? While I was on trial? No, I wouldn’t have been that informal. _My Master_ , that’s what I said. _Ventress set me up-- my master will prove that!_

 _You’re getting distracted, Ahsoka,_ you whisper in the back of my head. _Remember the task at hand._

Ezra is watching me, waiting. I give him a little smile. “He was my Master.”

My Master. I left him. I left him and now-

_Deep breaths, little one.  
_

“Kanan said he was the greatest warrior the Jedi had in the clone wars.” The admiration in Ezra’s voice hurts to hear. He would have loved the temple. He would have loved the missions, the strategy. Being surrounded every day by people as clever as him, as fast as him. He would have loved you.

_Hey. Can you do me a favor and at least try to keep a cool head, Snips? The kid didn’t come here to hear about your sad history._

“He was powerful. Rarely lost a battle. But what surprised people was how kind he was. He cared deeply about his friends. And looked out for them until the end.”

The end. We were back to back, outside the temple. The sun was setting. Coruscant really was a gorgeous planet. Though maybe everyone thinks that about their home.

_More than you realize, I understand wanting to walk away from the Order._

You didn’t look at me when you said it. Maybe you couldn’t. But-- come on, Anakin. How could I not have known? I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t have made it as your apprentice if I were. Of course I knew. You think I didn’t see how you and Padme looked at each other? I heard the wink when you said, Always a pleasure, Senator and how she let her hand linger on your arm as she said, until next time, Master Jedi. I saw how you changed any time she came in the room, like there’d been a shift in your center of gravity. You orbited her like a planet around its star. Oh, Anakin, never did compartmentalize well. I was better at you than that, in the end. Learned the lessons you taught better than you learned them from Obi-Wan. You always drew on your feelings.

The thing is--I always thought, at least privately, that it made you a great Jedi. Maybe I just wanted to believe that-- I was hotheaded too. It’s why I wanted to study with you. And while I was your apprentice I felt like you saw me, really saw me. The Order was hard for me to swallow, sometimes, and you and I-- we were the same. So of course it was hard for you, too.

What a pair.

 _I know,_ I said, and then I walked away. It was the last thing I said to you.

“Do you know what happened to him?” Ezra asks. He's eager. He's young enough that even if he won't admit it he's still hoping there will be some great warrior, some hero, who will step in and win us this war. Maybe Anakin Skywalker could have been that. But Anakin Skywalker is gone.

Still..that force from the tie earlier. Remembering it conjures it up again, so powerful I sway in my chair. I shut my eyes again. I had the briefest image of a dark mask, scarred flesh, a face burned away past the point of recognition. Fear and dread like I’ve never felt before or even imagined, feelings overflowing like dark water seeping in under a door that was supposed to be tightly shut.

_Steady. Steady, Ahsoka. Just tell him what he needs to know._

I don’t know for sure that it was you in that tie. Or, some part of you. Someone that used to be you.

“The war ended, and the Jedi were accused of treason. One by one, they were hunted down.” “

By the inquisitors,” Ezra said grimly.

“And worse,” I said.

Worse. I could feel your eyes on my back as I walked away from the temple. Sometimes I think I can still feel them. It’s a funny feeling. For the years I was your student, I was mostly watching you. It didn’t occur to me that you were watching me just as closely. That our need went both ways. I don’t want it to be true. But when I reached out with the Force from the Ghost to that tie, earlier today I felt something that felt like you. I felt something that mirrored my own surprise, and something that felt almost like a longing.

_Look at me, I felt someone saying. Ahsoka, look at me._


End file.
